Fraud & Scams
Financial fraud, phishing, identity theft, scam alerts, data breaches, and how to protect yourself and your accounts.
Latest in Fraud & Scams
A Pennsylvania man was indicted for draining over $1 million from one elderly victim
A federal grand jury has accused a Pennsylvania man of turning an elderly investor’s life savings into a commercial property deed in his own name....
Credit-union customers exposed in the Doxim data breach can claim $100, or up to $5,000, by October 13
A settlement notice reaching bank and credit-union customers this summer asks recipients to make a decision: accept a quick, modest cash payment, or take the...
An 86-year-old lost $700,000 to a scam and is suing Bank of America and Merrill Lynch to recover it
A lawsuit moving through Manhattan’s courts asks whether a brokerage and its banks should have stopped an elderly customer from wiring away nearly everything she...
The FTC sent over a million Brigit customer refunds by check and PayPal in May 2026
The Federal Trade Commission made a second Brigit refund distribution in May 2026, sending 1,052,038 payments totaling more than $6.8 million. The money went by...
American Consumer Credit Counseling clients can claim up to $3,580 from a data-breach settlement by September 16
People whose information was exposed in American Consumer Credit Counseling’s January 2025 email-account breach can seek as much as $3,580 under a proposed settlement, but...
Crimson Wine Group customers hit by a cyberattack can claim up to $5,000 for losses before September 1
Crimson Wine Group customers whose private information was accessed in a June 2024 cyberattack can seek as much as $5,000 for documented losses under a...
An Equinox data-breach settlement offers about $100 or up to $5,000 for documented losses to claimants who file by October 23
People notified that their information was involved in an Equinox Inc. data incident have an open settlement claim window, but no cash arrives automatically. The...
Onsite Mammography patients can claim up to $5,000 from a data-breach settlement before the August 11 deadline
Patients notified that their information was involved in Onsite Mammography’s October 2024 email-account breach have until August 11, 2026, to claim settlement benefits. The largest...
A pitch to take a reverse mortgage and pour the cash into an annuity is a red flag that can carry a hefty annuity fee
A reverse mortgage converts home equity into borrowed cash, while an annuity converts cash into an income contract. Combining the two can make the homeowner...
The IRS Identity Protection PIN blocks a thief from filing a return in your name and stealing your refund
A stolen Social Security number gives a criminal enough information to file a fake federal return before the legitimate taxpayer, but it is not enough...
Zelle network banks have reimbursed some customers tricked into paying fake bank or government agents since 2023
Zelle’s bank network has included a reimbursement rule for certain impostor scams since June 30, 2023, giving some customers a route that goes beyond the...
Federal authorities arrested 19 people in a $40 million elder-fraud ring in November 2025
A federal elder-fraud operation in November 2025 targeted 19 people tied to losses exceeding $40 million, according to the FBI’s San Diego field office. The...
Fake unpaid-toll texts are spreading nationwide, and forwarding them to 7726 helps report the sender
A text claiming that a small unpaid toll will trigger a large late fee can turn a few dollars of invented debt into a stolen...
A Wisconsin woman lost about $400,000 to a gold-courier scam; national losses top $262 million
A Wisconsin resident lost approximately $400,000 after criminals persuaded her that her money was unsafe, pushed her to liquidate a brokerage account and sent couriers...
Government-impersonation complaints topped 330,000 last year, up 25%, and the real agency never suspends your Social Security number
Government impersonation has become a mass-market theft system built around a false administrative crisis. Federal data recorded more than 330,000 complaints in 2025, a 25%...
No court or government agency will ever tell you to pay a bill or fine through a Bitcoin ATM
No legitimate court, tax agency, utility company, or police department accepts payment through a Bitcoin ATM. That single fact is worth more to a retiree’s...
Port-out scammers steal your phone number to intercept the codes guarding your bank
The money at stake in a phone-number takeover is roughly everything a bank account will let a thief move in a single afternoon. Criminals who...
Scammers now pose as the agents who can recover your stolen money, and any upfront fee is the tell
The cruelest fraud aimed at retirees no longer targets people with money to lose. It targets people who have already lost it. Federal investigators are...
Comcast customers can claim $50 with no proof from a $117.5 million data-breach settlement before September 14
A $117.5 million settlement over a 2023 cyberattack on Xfinity is paying former and current Comcast customers a flat sum of about $50 with no...
Medicare warns of a “new card” scam demanding your number before benefits switch
A caller says a new Medicare card is on the way, then explains that benefits cannot switch over until the recipient reads back the number...